


Exes and Doughs

by maximoffs



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Art Thief Loki, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Exes to Lovers, Humor, LOTS of mentions of truth and justice, M/M, Minor Loki/Thor (Marvel), References to Shakespeare, Second Chances, The Avengers Are Good Bros, captain america... steve rogers, disgruntled baker bucky barnes, it's a donut shop in case you're wondering, no Hydra, previous mention of like the most minor bucky/t'challa ever, thor and loki are not siblings in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23977615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximoffs/pseuds/maximoffs
Summary: Captain America could have decided to walk into any donut shop on that Tuesday afternoon, but he had to walk into Bucky’s.“Your life isn’t Casablanca,” Bucky said to himself, out loud, counting out the drawer in the back.OR (to the tune of Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me"): He's a donut-maker and Steve's on the Avengers ♬OR: Bucky Barnes, ex-assassin-turned-donut-chef, gets a visit from his ex-boyfriend-turned-protector-of-the-People, Captain America.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 84
Kudos: 367





	Exes and Doughs

I.

It had been long enough that Bucky did not recognize the man when he walked in. Tall, and blond, and serious looking enough to be just his type, a sharpness of jaw that teetered between screaming “ _I am very famous_ ” and “ _I am a paragon of justice_.” Again, somehow. Just his type.

He’d seen him on TV, of course. He knew who he was. Everyone in Brooklyn, in America, in the world with access to the news knew who he was. A soldier-turned-celebrity. The personification of hard work, and fairness, and American values, and blah blah blah. It was written into the broadness of his shoulders and the curve of his forehead, every perfect strand of hair. Almost as though he’d been created in a lab.

All of that registered. What didn’t, however, what took some time— the briefest of milliseconds, but some time nevertheless— was who he had been before the shield, and the fame, and the world-saving. Before the lab, too, and all the tiny Strength and Justice particles that had been injected into the man’s bloodstream. (Bucky had had injections, too, but they were not nearly as concentrated, their values slow and amorphous, like CVS-brand traits. Not American Strength, but --rength, with the “St” somehow smudged off of the capsule. Whatever. It didn’t matter. It was too late to compare serum qualities now, let alone trace the production standards back to some sweatshop that underpaid their workers and violated countless ethics procedures. Steve had gotten the Good Serum, and Bucky had Also Gotten Some Serum.)

There was always something so bizarre and surreal about seeing a famous person in the flesh, like you expected them to be a cardboard cut-out or hologram or something else entirely. But when Bucky saw the man walk into his shop, and when he saw every other head turn toward him, and when he saw the hesitant flash of a smile on his face, he did not think— _Holy shit, there’s Captain America_. He thought instead— _Holy shit, there’s Steve Rogers_ — and proceeded to burn his hand on the extra hot oat milk he was steaming for another customer’s latte. 

“Oof,” Wilson said, watching this go down with only the mildest hint of second-hand embarrassment on his face. “That’s rough.”

“Shut up, Wilson.” 

“You need me to finish this up so you can get your Autograph Book from the back?”

Bucky fixed one of his World Famous Glowers at him. 

“Hey,” Wilson put his hands up, _I’m just saying_. “Don’t forget that I _did_ offer, when this all goes so much worse for you.”

“What are you talking about?” Bucky mumbled, sopping up the milk from his hand and from the counter.

“You, ogling Captain America there. Not so subtle.” 

“Okay, I’m not ogling.”

“You’re ogling.”

“I know the guy, okay?”

“Yeah, you and the rest of the world,” Wilson said with a snort. 

“No, I mean— ”

But it was too late. He’d already approached the counter. He was already looking from Wilson to Bucky, a look on his face like he was trying to remember the capital of Wyoming. And then he smiled. _Cheyenne_. 

“Bucky Barnes?”  
  
  


II.

Bucky made himself smile. “Steve,” he said. It came out very calm. 

“Holy shit,” Steve said, echoing Bucky’s own, incredibly private thoughts. “What are the odds? How are you?”

“Great, yeah. You?”

“This is,” Steve began, taking a look around, “a change.” He did something truly evil then. He beamed. “It smells incredible in here. This is all you, right? Your big dream? God— it’s really been years.”

Bucky blinked. It was one thing to remember someone in the extreme exclusivity of your own thoughts, and it was another thing entirely to be _remembered_. Bucky had no desire to be perceived, now or ever. His sole desire, as Captain Justice for Breakfast had so willingly pointed out, was to make delicious donuts for misguided millenials who chose food over the possibility of ever owning their own homes. He gritted out another smile anyway.

“What brings you in, Captain?” Wilson asked. “A dozen donuts for the Avengers?”

“Better make that two dozen,” Steve said, with another horrible smile. “Those guys can eat. Let’s just do an assortment— ” and here, he looked at Bucky, “—whatever your favorites are. And— ”

Whatever he was about to say next was swallowed up by the presence of a slighter, less wholesome looking man at Steve’s right elbow. His smile did not exude the time-honored values of righteousness and integrity. His smile looked just like a cat’s, and everyone knew about the inherent treachery of cats. 

“Looking for me?” the new man asked.

“You know for a fact I am,” Steve said. “That couldn’t possibly be a question in your mind.” 

“It could have been. I’m very crazy, after all.” 

“You’re not crazy, Loki,” Steve said, rolling his eyes. He gave Bucky and Wilson a look; it was a look that said _I have everything under control here_. “You’re a kleptomaniac with an IQ of 175 and mild clinical depression. Go sit down while I pay for this.”

Loki looked at Bucky furtively over Steve’s shoulder. He had eyes like a cat’s, too; he had eyes that said he knew exactly when you’d be going to the toilet and exactly which clues you had to look up for the New York Times Sunday Crossword even though you boasted on Facebook that you’d figured the whole thing out yourself, and all your aunts had already commented about how smart and accomplished you were. “Crazy,” he mouthed, and walked away. 

“I don’t know, man,” Wilson said. “He seems kind of crazy to me.”

Steve snorted out a laugh, shaking his head. “He’s harmless, unless you’re a Cézanne or 16th century Gusoku armor.”

“16th what?”

“Aren’t thieves a little below your pay grade?” Bucky asked. “Surely there’s a terrorist or an alien or a— ” his eyes widened for one, lightning bolt moment— “mafia of terrorist aliens.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth quirked. Bucky recognized this somewhere deep inside of his relentless memory, a look in Steve’s eye that was only meant for him, a reaction so ingrained and so familiar, it said: _There you are._ Piles of pulp-y science fiction novels around their bed, and Bucky’s voice reading all the particularly gruesome bits out loud. (Why was that happening? The stupid, year-ago images knocking around in Bucky’s head like allergies or unwanted visitors or ugly rocks. It had been long enough now that new images should have replaced these old ones, clearing away the cobwebs to make room for the fascinating and frankly-sure-to-be-crucial-at-some-point all night Wikipedia mental jaunts Bucky went on when he couldn’t sleep. What the hell was this? Watercolors and the scent of iced tea clogging up his system, making it impossible to remember everything he’d read that one time about combustion engines and the Jonestown Massacre.)

“We haven’t had any terrorist aliens so far, Buck,” Steve said, shoving him out of his thoughts, “but you’ll be the first person I tell when we do.”

“Well, now you know where to find me.”

“That’s right,” Steve said, but his smile had quickly turned, his brow furrowing.

“What is it?” Bucky asked.

“He took my wallet. Give me just one second— ”

“Hey man,” Wilson said, “it’s on the house.”

“ _What_?” Bucky said at the same time Steve was saying, “No, no, no— I’ll just be a minute, hold on,” and walking away to presumably yell at Loki, which in Steve Rogers meant a calm but stern talking to. Bucky took this opportunity to glare at Wilson. 

“Dude— what?”

“What do you mean _what_?”

“Why are you offering him free things? He’s fucking Captain America. He doesn’t need any more free things,” Bucky hissed.

“And what was that, between you two?”

“What was _what_?”

“You know what I saw,” Wilson said, in that infuriating way of his. “I know what I saw, and you know what I saw.”

They continued to bicker until Steve came back, wallet in hand and a sheepish smile on his face. _All in a day’s work_ , Bucky mimicked, in his head, in Steve’s Ultra Righteousness voice. (It was the voice he used in press conferences and on CNN. _Yes_ — sometimes— very rarely, but it had happened before, Bucky was mature enough to admit it— sometimes he caught the Avengers on the news, reassuring the public, explaining themselves, strategically sidestepping any kind of responsibility for the havoc they’d caused on priceless landmarks around the world. All in a day’s work.)

Steve paid, refusing to accept Wilson’s generosity, like the good Catholic boy he was. Bucky watched him through narrowed eyes and a haphazard smile plastered onto his face; he watched as he left a $10 tip in the jar, and he watched as he took his seat across from the crazy thief. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on what end of the “invasive” spectrum you stood on), Bucky couldn’t hear much of their conversation. The words he _did_ hear, in order, were: “Shakespeare!” and “only one time” and “a complete accident” and “MI5” and “Shakespeare” again and “the Geneva incident.” 

He craned his head. Other customers came by eventually, and ruined the rest of his day.  
  
  


III.

Captain America could have decided to walk into any donut shop on that Tuesday afternoon, but he had to walk into Bucky’s. 

“Your life isn’t Casablanca,” Bucky said to himself, out loud, counting out the drawer in the back.

“That it is _not_ ,” Shuri replied. She fixed him with one of her all-knowing, entirely too wicked, all-pain-in-the-ass grins. She was up to her elbows in dish detergent. 

“Was I talking to you? Finish the dishes.”

“I always get stuck on dish duty,” Shuri said. “This is the fourth day in a row! If you don’t fire Parker, I will fire Parker.” 

“You literally don’t have the authority to fire anyone, for fuck’s sake, why did I hire so many teenagers?”

“We keep you young?” 

“No,” Bucky said, sliding the bills into the safe. “You do the opposite. You’re giving me greys.” 

Shuri laughed. “So what are you sulking about now, James?”

“You can’t call me that. No one calls me that.” 

“My _brother_ used to call you that.”

“I’m not talking to you,” Bucky said, very carefully, “about your brother.” There was nothing to even say about T’Challa, who was gracious and handsome and incredible, _unbelievably_ wrong for Bucky. They had dated for four and a half months. The sex had been good. They had both, very obviously, had other people on their minds; and when Nakia had visited the city during a brief stint at the UN, it was the nail in a coffin of fun (and memorable!) but largely dispassionate times. 

Shuri wrinkled her nose. “I already know too much about you and my brother. Answer my question!” She flicked wet water and suds at him.

“Everything’s fine,” Bucky said.

“Really. This has nothing to do with the fact that _Captain America_ was in here earlier, coupled with the fact that _everyone_ _knows_ you had a thing?”

“Everyone— what?”

“Fine,” Shuri shrugged. “Maybe Wilson told me.” 

“That motherfucker.”

Shuri giggled. “I caught a glimpse of him before my shift. My god, he’s cute for a white guy.” 

“He’s fine,” Bucky said, standing up, “he’s perfectly fine. Are you and the new kid gonna be okay locking up?”

“You always ask that, James. The answer is always yes, and Ned’s been working here for two months now.” 

“Is he still weird?”

“I don’t think selling donuts cures you of your weirdness.” Shuri gave him another sly grin. “It certainly hasn’t cured _you_.” 

Shuri should have seen it coming, and frankly Bucky couldn’t be held responsible that she hadn’t. He lunged toward the industrial-style sink, sunk his hand into the soapy water, and threw a fistful of it into her face. Shuri absolutely _shrieked_ , dropped the dish in her hand back into the water, and scooped up two handfuls of suds to fling at Bucky. From there on: pandemonium. Shuri dodged Bucky’s next attack, but wound up slipping on the soapy floor, sliding backwards. Bucky took the advantage to skid soap off of the surface of the dish bath and toss it at her. Shuri kicked back up and pitched a sponge at Bucky; it hit him square in the face. It went on like this until betrayal came. Shuri, in the kitchen, with the overhanging faucet spray. 

“You wouldn’t,” Bucky said.

“I would.” 

“No.”

“Yes.” She had her thumb on the nozzle, the spray aimed at Bucky’s face as he slowly, so slowly began to back away. “Not another step, Barnes.” 

He stopped. He— formerly known as The Asset, rescued in Austria, recruited by “Staff D” operatives, injected with pure fucking superhuman heroin, memory and existence selectively rearranged, subsiding on gunmetal and adrenaline, a sniper so deadly the CIA thought twice before contracting him—stopped, and very carefully put his hands up. 

“Tell me,” Shuri said, “about you and the Captain.” 

Bucky heaved a sigh so dramatic the Brontes’ moors would be impressed with it. “We dated,” he conceded. “Before all the— you know, shadow-y terrorist organizations and killer robots. Before enlisting, even. We grew up right across the street from one another but went to different schools up until the 8th grade. After that, we were pretty inseparable.”

“You were in the army together?” 

“Yep,” Bucky said, relaxing a little. He leaned against the sink; he was mainly soaked from head to toe anyway. “We both grew up pretty poor, you know. And Steve’s mom died early, he came to live with me our senior year. There was the draft, back then, and we figured enlisting was some kind of moral obligation, anyway, something to be proud about. Dumb kid shit— whatever. We got sent abroad on some— I don’t know, some of it’s hazy. We got sent abroad. I think he was with me. There was an accident.” 

“And then?” Shuri’s expression had softened.

“And then I was honorably discharged. I took some time off. I went to culinary school.”

“You didn’t go to culinary school.”

“I watched _Julie & Julia _ twenty times, made everything from _How to be a Domestic Goddess_ to _The Joy of Cooking_ to _Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking_ , realized I liked pâte à choux more than duck confit, and worked on opening this place up.” There was no reason to fill in the years in between. There was no reason to say: _I also did this, this, and this. I hurt these people, here. I only needed one bullet. I could have done it with a paper cup._ Bucky liked Shuri, despite his strict, self-imposed abstinence from ever letting anyone get too close to him again. He had a memory like this, of closeness, of something— a hand reaching for his hand, slipping at the last moment. It wasn’t real, but it was. It flickered in and out. 

“What happened?” Shuri was saying.

“Huh?”

“With the _Captain_. Why’d you break up??”

Bucky shrugged. “People break up all the time, for all sorts of things. Irreconcilable differences, incompatible life goals, infidelity. Take your pick; it was probably one of those.” 

“I refuse to believe _Captain America_ is the type to _cheat_.”

“Why do you keep saying his name like that, weirdo? I can almost see it in italics, plastered on a marquee somewhere.”

“Maybe that’s just a ‘you’ thing, James.” 

“Look,” Bucky said. “I answered your questions. I stayed here, with you, watching you slack off while on the clock, for a good thirty minutes after I was planning on leaving, _and_ my socks are soaking wet. Can I leave now? How am I being held hostage in my own shop by a nineteen year old?”

“Everyone knows where the real power lies,” Shuri said with a grin. Then she turned the spray on.  
  
  


IV.

Often it was impossible to sleep. There was a life Bucky had had, a life he had wholly lived and then left behind. It was filled to the brim with empty, aching faces, pale and lifeless under the lens of his rifle, or twisted and red and grinning, sitting on his chest in his dreams, their teeth grazing his eyes. This was a life Bucky had had, and sometimes only the scorching heat of the shower could drown it out. Sometimes it crept into his bathroom, too, and laughed at him through the mirror.

On nights like these, Bucky sat up, cross-legged in bed, hunched over his laptop. He read about the Beales at Grey Gardens and he obsessed over the Kennedy family— remembering something there, for a moment, about the man himself, a blade of grass irritating his elbow, a gunshot in the middle of the day, heat kicking up around his eyes. It felt like a dream, the way Bucky felt like he was one hundred years old and thirty-three simultaneously. He moved on; he read about other things. The history of FAO Schwarz and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. The impact of climate change on Maine’s lobster industry. Jeffrey Dahmer. The Roanoke Colony. After a while he tried to pick things that had no personal significance to him, in the hopes that it would be easier to sleep, if he happened to sleep. 

Sometimes curiosity got the better of him; Bucky was mature enough to admit to that. Bucky was not exactly, not _definitionally_ , a masochist, but he didn’t always know what was good for him, either. Who did? Which one of us could say they had never obsessed over a past love in the shower, reliving snatches of moments, of conversations that could be redone and done _better_ , proceeded to get out, proceeded to sit in a towel, proceeded to rummage through the cupboards and the fridge, eaten stale tortilla chips with cold nacho cheese, made a sandwich out of cold cuts and hot sauce, sat back in bed and hovered over the search bar, wondering it was better to know or wonder for the rest of forever? In the dark of the room, staring into the laptop’s glow. Bucky took a bite of his sandwich— the potato chips were a good call— and he typed in “Captain America” and he hit “News.” 

The first link was a video. Of course he clicked it. Of course.

Steve Rogers— sorry, _Captain America_ — stood beside a reporter, looking uncomfortable and bruised, his hands dug deep into his pockets. Bucky wasn’t aware that the suit even had pockets, but— well— it wasn’t as though he had seriously studied it, or anything. He wasn’t a public speaker, Bucky remembered, brave and borderline reckless behind the scenes, yes, strategic up to a point, yes, but unwilling to compromise his point of view enough for a palatable soundbite. Steve had a righteousness to his words that could often be misinterpreted as a mean streak. Bucky knew he could not help it; Steve didn’t _try_ to be virtuous to the point of intolerability— it’s just the way he was. 

On the segment he was watching, Bucky could recognize that pinched look on Steve’s face from miles away. The anchor was asking about the mayor’s cooperation with the safeguards the Avengers and a dozen lawmakers had recently recommended, and Steve was trying not to say what was really on his mind. Anyone who knew him would know this. The anchor did not seem to know him at all.

Bucky x’d out, clicked the next video on the list. He didn’t want to do this anymore, but some diabolical spirit compelled him. It moved his cursor and pushed down on the link. The spirit did this and it laughed in the face of Bucky’s dignity. 

“And here’s the latest coming in from Krakow, where the Avengers have been called in to investigate the most recent hiding place of the nefarious Doctor Doom. What they found could be one piece of a much bigger picture...”

The picture shifted from the newscaster to Steve, and Iron Man, and the teenaged girl who could move things with her mind. They were at the mouth of a cave, and then they were underground, flipping through files, inspecting various bits of machinery. The story was interesting, sure, but Bucky was more focused on the stiffness in Steve’s shoulders, the way his spine seemed taut and severe, a tightness in his body he only recognized from before the serum. Bucky wanted to reach out and touch; he wanted to figure out what was wrong, though it was no longer his right or place to fix it. Steve had never needed fixing, after all— not really. Both of them were wrong in thinking he ever did. 

The camera feed cut out, abruptly, a flash of static and white noise, and the newscaster’s bust was back in view. He laughed, almost sheepish. “Well that’s what happens when you send an intern with a camera, folks.” Bucky rolled his eyes. It was amatuer and sloppy. It didn’t make any sense. He clicked out of the video, and hit “Images” instead. He did not feel crazy; he already knew what he was. Things he did came up to the surface and sunk back again, making tentative shapes, just vague enough and out of reach. It was all behind him now.

He looked at the pictures for some time. He was allowed this. It had been three days since Steve had walked through his front door, and Bucky had resisted this long, and that _meant_ something. He looked at the pictures, and he didn’t remember anything.

When he looked away from them, the sun had already crept in through the blinds, casting light onto his bare legs.  
  
  


V.

Crazy Loki was already waiting outside when Bucky turned the corner.

“I don’t have anything,” Bucky said, unlocking the shop’s door. “I don’t even have donuts yet— and there’s less than twenty bucks in my wallet.”

“That’s fine,” Loki said, smiling his bad, cat smile. “I’m only here for my art.”

“What art? The art you stole? Zaō Gongen sculptures? The Duchess of Angoulême’s bracelets? Van Gogh’s _Café Terrace at Night_ , that art?”

“You’ve been doing your research,” Loki said, and his smile widened. “No. But I would like the Van Gogh back, someday. It was a gift.” 

“A gift to you, from you.” Bucky opened the door, and he let Loki in, following after him. “We don’t open for another hour and a half.” 

“A gift from me, to my lover,” Loki said. “I’ll be very quiet, here in my corner.” He was holding a leather padfolio to his chest, black and sleek, very expensive. 

“Okay,” Bucky said. “I don’t have time to argue.” 

“It’s best not to.”

“If you try to take a chair or something— I’ll pull the fire alarm.”

“And what would that do?”

“Turn on the sprinklers,” Bucky said, seriously. He indicated the padfolio. “You’d get away, but your _art_ would be soaking wet.”

The corner of Loki’s mouth quirked; he looked amused. Without another word, he sat at his seat from the day before. Bucky could not help but wonder what kind of a romantic partner a man like that took, to love them enough to steal priceless paintings for them, to stay together through crime and through punishment. Had Bucky loved Steve like that? He thought of his posture again, the way he looked as though he were always squaring for an attack. No. Bucky would not have stolen a Van Gogh for Steve Rogers. He would have gone to war for him, though.

As much as the shop had been a dream of his, Bucky’s favorite part of owning it was the quiet before anyone stepped foot inside, just him and his flours. He knew better than to admit this out loud, knew the harassment of insolent teenagers better than anybody, at this point. Still. Peter and Wilson wouldn’t arrive until 8am, which gave him an hour to enjoy his life of solitary bliss, and maybe keep an eye on the creepy (but somehow also handsome?— Bucky would have to revisit this thought at a much later time) kleptomaniac in the corner. 

He fixed the yeast, first, then began mixing together the dry ingredients. The basics of donut-making were second nature and habitual enough that Bucky could do them while thinking of other things, mainly new flavor combinations and punny names for them. Spring had finally hit the city, so most recently he’d been featuring blood orange, lemon and honey, and vanilla hibiscus donuts. He made blueberry donuts, earl grey and lavender donuts, vegan donuts, gluten-free donuts. He made chocolate sourdough donuts covered in pistachio, Nutella donuts, Cap’n Crunch donuts. The more donuts he made, the better he felt, somehow. Like the sins of his past life could be written over with melted butter and rainbow sprinkles, hot oil, flawless glaze. 

He was just about to get started on toppings when he heard a noise from the dining room, and then another. His hands were covered in flour. Bucky wiped them on his jeans and left the kitchen to see what the sudden commotion was.

There, in the middle of the room, Loki had rearranged the tables into a semicircle around what he had already claimed as his corner. Various items had been taken from the counters— menus, plastic cutlery, napkin holders, bottles of iced coffee— and then set on the chairs— a makeshift audience— and he was pacing around the patch of space in between, reading loudly from his open padfolio. 

“ _Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday humour,  
__and like enough to consent. What would you say to me now, an  
__were your very very Rosalind?_ ”

“What,” Bucky stated, “the fuck.”

Loki stopped his pacing, and looked up from his notes. Seeing it was only Bucky there, he continued.

“ _Nay, you were better speak first; and when you were  
__gravell'd for lack of matter, you might take occasion to kiss.  
__Very good orators, when they are out, they will spit; and for  
__lovers lacking- God warn us!- matter, the cleanliest shift is to  
__kiss._ ”

“No,” Bucky said. “Hello? I said what the fuck? What are you doing?”

This time, Loki fixed him with a glare. It was the first time Bucky had seen him look anything less than delighted, and frankly it was a lot less disconcerting. 

“I think it’s obvious,” he said, “exactly what I’m doing.”

“ _Excuse me_? No. No, it is not fucking obvious. Why did you do this to my dining room? What the fuck is happening?”

“My art,” Loki said slowly, like Bucky was the crazy one. “How do you propose I put on a one-person _As You Like It_ without having my lines memorized and blocked?” 

“You,” Bucky said, feeling as though he had been caught up in the middle of some very elaborate prank, “are putting on a play?”

“Yes, you idiot. Did your mother do acid when she was pregnant with you?”

“How the fuck am I the slow one here? How was I supposed to know this is what you meant when you said your ‘art’?”

“Context clues,” Loki said, simply, as if there had been any at all. Then, apparently, he decided he had had enough of Bucky’s questions, and turned back to his padfolio. 

“ _Then she puts you to entreaty, and there begins new  
__Matter._ Pause. _Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress; or I  
__should think my honesty ranker than my wit._ ”

“Absolutely not,” Bucky said. He rummaged in his back pocket for his phone, and he did something he had not done in many, many years. _Come get your criminal_ , he typed, and pressed “Send.”

It took Steve under half an hour to get there, and he did not arrive alone. Trailing behind him was the other big blond one— Thor— some kind of god or king or both from space, Bucky knew, which would normally be enough for him to completely lose his shit over, any other day, maybe when his shop hadn’t been hijacked and flooded with terrible Shakespeare. Still. Thor might know whether alien terrorist groups existed— Bucky made a mental note to ask him, once his dining room was finally cleared of all mania. 

“Why is this happening?” Bucky asked, in lieu of a greeting. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, “I didn’t know he’d like it here so much.” 

“Yeah, well— what’s that?” Bucky asked, watching Thor cross the room, watching Loki pause what he was doing and smile up at him. “Do they know each… other?” He trailed off. His voice came out weak and untenable as Thor opened his arms and Loki fit himself into them, up on his tiptoes to kiss him. Bucky turned back to Steve, completely out of things to say. 

“Yeah,” Steve said, tightly, “they know each other.”   
  
  


VI.

“How did it happen?” Bucky asked, sitting over a cup of coffee with Steve after they had convinced Loki to put the tables and chairs back where they belonged. Wilson had come in, too, at just the right time. It meant Bucky could talk with Steve while someone took care of the shop. “I mean, Christ, what goes on in that Tower of yours?”

Steve shook his head, sipping from his coffee. “The police nationale called us a few years ago to help assist with a slew of robberies in and around Paris. They were convinced the perpetrator was someone with… abilities— maybe a mutant, like the Maximoff twins— and they wanted us to come look at it. I mean, he was just _that_ good. Once we tracked down Loki, though, he was easy enough to catch. Nothing enhanced or out of the ordinary, the man’s just smart.”

Bucky turned to look at them again, the alien and the criminal, picking out donuts together like a completely normal, non-alien, non-criminal couple. Thor had his arm around Loki’s waist, and he was looking at him like the sun shone out of his fucking ass. It was disgusting. It was absurd! Bucky felt a pang of envy so brutally unkind he considered pouring the scalding cup of coffee down the front of his shirt. When he looked back at Steve, there must have been something truly pathetic in his expression because Steve was smiling at him, ever so softly.

“What?” Bucky said.

“You have flour on your face.”

“Oh, fucking— perfect.”

“Here,” Steve leaned in, and brushed his fingers over Bucky’s cheek. If Bucky had been paying attention, instead of focusing on his hands on the table in front of him, he would not have missed the slight blush on Steve’s face. “It’s gone now.”

“Thanks.” It came out as a mumble. Why did it have to come out as a mumble? Was it too late to dump the coffee on himself? “Anyway, keep going. That doesn’t explain how they got together.”

“Right,” Steve said, laughing. God, that laugh was awful. “Once we figured out where Loki was hiding out, we sent Thor to retrieve him, turn him into the authorities. Sometimes it just works out that way. Thor says— well, they got to talking.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow.

“I know, I know. Thor still turned him in, though.”

“How do you end up with the guy that put you in jail?”

“Officially? No idea. Off the record, though,” Steve leaned in, “you’ll have to ask Thor.”

“Ugh,” Bucky said. “I had a whole list of much cooler things to ask him about.”

“You should do that, then, instead.”

“No,” Bucky shook his head. “No way I can sleep at night without figuring this out.”

Steve laughed again, and his expression softened. “Have you been doing a lot of that lately? Sleeping.”

“None of your business.”

“Buck.”

“What?” Bucky asked, sharper than he intended. “It’s not. It’s no one’s business but my own.”

“You can’t force me to stop caring about you,” Steve blurted, as Bucky stood up. His coffee had grown cold, anyway. 

“I have to get back to work,” Bucky said. What he had _meant_ to say was something cutting and vicious, something like _I never think about you at all_ or _I’ve stopped caring completely_ , both of which were patently untrue, but made for great movie moments. Bucky’s life was not a movie, Bucky’s life was barely the pilot episode of a discarded sitcom. Maybe, once, it could have been a movie— chaotic and unpredictable, a look into the Asset’s life as he juggled periodic, years long sleeps and taking out top-level public figures who could potentially be a threat to American interests. What was it about— Kennedy— the smell of freshly cut grass— Howard Stark— on the verge of a technological breakthrough, the wrong place at the wrong time?, a license plate number 68-something— Unidentified Target #44— Unidentified Target #62— Unidentified Target #99— what was it about them? It could have been a movie, if Bucky could remember what he had done and what had been done to him. 

A cold day, the snow seeping in under his socks. A life before that life, too: blue eyes peering up at him from between clean, summer-bleached sheets. The curve of his smile that Bucky liked to kiss so much, an open-ended parenthesis. Sandy blond hair. A life before a life maybe, or something completely beyond that— like being alive twice*. 

The CIA, they had told him, only had the interests of American safety at heart. Bucky used to take that to mean the safety of the American people. 

Anyway. What he said was: “I have to get back to work.” Lamely. Like a coward.

The look that crossed Steve’s face signaled that he did not want to let this go yet, and that he was doing it only out of respect for Bucky and the friendship that they had once had. He knew, also, that Bucky knew all of his tells. Steve had never tried to hide them from him.

In the back, Peter Parker was having a minor meltdown over the presence of Thor five feet from him, on the other side of the door. 

“Just go talk to him,” Wilson was saying, a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “He seems friendly enough.”

“Of course he’s friendly Sam, he’s an _Avenger_ and he’s also from _space_ and he has forty-seven abs, I think I’m having— it’s called bi panic and it’s incredibly serious, and— oh, hey Mr. Barnes, my Aunt May just called and said I have to come home _right now_ , so— ”

“No,” Bucky said. 

“Okay, but— ”

“Absolutely not. I’ve dealt with enough nonsense today and it’s not even noon. Throw some cold water on your face. Get your apron on. Go out there and sell some goddamn donuts, that is literally _all_ you have to do.”

Peter looked mortified, but praise be to god, did what he was told. Bucky turned to scream into a dishtowel, and turned back right into one of Sam Wilson’s Knowing Looks.

“It’s going that well, huh?”

“Silence.”

“You know when you say things like ‘I’ve dealt with enough nonsense today,’ you’re really showing your age, right?”

Bucky mustered up the energy to glare. 

“Hey,” Wilson said, and to Bucky’s complete horror his voice was soft. “Don’t you think it’s time you cut yourself some slack?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look,” he said, and he pulled Bucky by the arm, toward the window of the swinging kitchen door. From where they stood, they could see the back of Peter’s head, wildly gesturing (which meant he could only possibly be talking about the Nutella donut) to a group of businessmen, and beyond him, Steve. He was not, by any means, a small man, but somehow he looked small now, sitting where Bucky had left him. He looked— as he was— a man out of time, tired and alone, a desolate quietness about the way he pressed his hands together, his fingers fidgeting. He was looking out the window. 

Bucky wanted, abruptly and achingly, to go to him, to take his hands. He wanted to know that Steve Rogers was not as lonely as he looked, because the thought of it was a desert choking Bucky’s mouth and lungs. 

“Don’t,” Bucky said, trying to pull away. Wilson kept him in place. “I don’t want— it’s not my place anymore. It’s not. I’ve got nothing to offer him.” 

“You know I’m not supposed to tell you this, but since you’re insisting on being an idiot, I’m going to have to.”

“What now?”

“The other day was fake.”

“What?”

“He’d been in here before,” Wilson said. “A few months ago, asking for you. He asked me not to say anything, just wanted to know whether you worked here, if you were well. I’d seen him before then, too, outside. Looking like he was working up the nerve to come in.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it’s obvious that the man cares about you, Barnes, and here you are, being stubborn and stupid about everything as always. I’m not going to stand here and tell you to get back into bed with Captain America, because I don’t know enough about it— ”

“And because it’s none of your business.”

Wilson rolled his eyes at that. “—But I _am_ going to tell you to at least go out there and have a conversation with him, because it’s obvious that whatever happened between you two had an impact on him.”

“Of course it did,” Bucky said, angrily. “He was the love of my life, once. Of course it had an impact on him.”

“Then don’t you at least owe him the respect of letting him down gently?”

“It’s not that,” Bucky said. He finally undid himself from Wilson’s weirdly superhuman clutches and pressed his back against the wall, in the danger zone of someone swinging the door open and squishing him behind it. It didn’t matter. Squish away. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Well, not with that attitude, buddy.” 

Bucky sighed. He did not want to do this— now or ever. He had already forgotten so much. He wanted to forget the image of Steve sitting alone at that table now, too. 

“There’s so little of me left, Sam. The person he once loved went abroad with him, and that person never came back.”

“Because S.H.I.E.L.D. took him, and the CIA took you.” 

Bucky had been studying the tiles on the floor. He glanced up, sharply, at that.

“It’s not exactly a well-kept secret,” Wilson said with a shrug.

“I never worked for the CIA,” Bucky said. “I was honorably discharged from the army, and I came back home to recover. The serum they gave me kept me young.” 

“Yeah, whatever, Barnes. I can tell you’ve gotten tired of lying, because you don’t really put your back into it anymore.”

“Shut up,” Bucky said. “Just shut up.” A long moment passed between them. Bucky peeked out the window again. “He came by?”

“Yeah, man.” 

“I wish he hadn’t.”

“But you’re glad he did?”

“No,” Bucky said, scowling. 

He peeked out the window again, but Steve wasn’t there.  
  
  


VII.

It had been a terrible day, all around, so the laws of logic dictated that it would only get worse before it could end. Bucky came home to a note slipped under his door; there was nothing surprising about the fact that Steve knew where he lived, or that he would be so bold. Nothing could surprise Bucky anymore. 

The note read:

_Buck,_

_I guess it was wrong of me to swing by like that when you haven’t heard a word from me in the past however many years. The few times our paths and jobs have crossed were tinged with so much unbearable professionalism that I figured you didn’t want anything to do with me at all, and instead of confronting you about it I chose to act like a coward and look the other way. I think you know this already, but I have to say it: I’m not a coward. I’m a lot of things, and not all of them are good or attractive, but not that. Still. Something about you makes me feel like there’s no weight to me and, gravityless, I’ll be pulled up to the sky and into another planet’s orbit if I get too close. Maybe you are that other planet._

_This might be a conversation you’re uncomfortable with. I remember when I lost you. Do you? I wish you didn’t. Sometimes I wish you didn’t remember me at all, instead of retaining all the patched together things they left to you, half-days and nights, whatever is in your past that gives you that glint-hard look whenever you see me around. That feeling passes, quick— because I’m selfish, you see. I want you to remember everything ever between us. If I could piece together the loss of time and memory and scent with my bare hands I would do it for you, Buck. You know I would. I hope you know I would._

_Maybe you don’t want that. I play back every time I saw you in the intervening years— that’s what I call them now— the years after you fell but before your honest-to-god delightful career change (you were beautiful with a gun, but it’s always been your smile that knocks me out), and I think of how they kept us apart. S.H.I.E.L.D. has always pretended to be something more righteous than it is; I think your former employers can relate. You always wanted to do the right thing, though, and I think maybe we have that in common._

_I’m sorry to say it, but I think you’ll be seeing a lot more of Loki from now on. I wouldn’t have brought him there in the first place if I thought it was something you couldn’t handle. I wanted to see you, though; I won’t lie about that. You mean the whole goddamn city to me._

_If you need help with Loki, you can contact Thor directly. His number: xxx-xxx-xxxx. Hold the phone away from your ear if you choose to call; he’s still getting used to what he calls our “ridiculous, outdated technology.”_

_Sorry, again. Not for seeing you, but for upsetting you. I didn’t know it’d be like that._

_Yours,  
_ _S. R._

_It’s a lie, by the way, the nonchalance. I know exactly how many years it’s been._

Bucky read it twice. Then he quietly got up from the sofa chair, and went into the kitchen. Why he kept it in the kitchen was a mystery, a stupid habit from his Bucharest days when his entire living space consisted of a room, a kitchen nook, and an area which might have generously been called a bathroom. That’s where he had kept it then— in a drawer in the kitchen. 

He took it out now and opened it carefully, barely touching the pages at all. In the middle of the book: a photograph of Captain America. He folded the note inside, too, next to a newspaper clipping from the 1940’s. He did not know why he kept these things, now that he didn’t need them anymore to remember, as though that was the only reason he held onto them. Bucky looked at Steve’s face for a long, stale moment. There was no oxygen left in the entirety of the apartment. 

Bucky went to sleep.  
  
  


VIII.

Days passed and he was strong until he wasn’t and Loki had gotten out of his chair to use the restroom or plant a bomb so it was now or never, and Bucky had gotten very good at not hesitating in the army, and then in his work after that. He slammed a hand down on Thor’s table and slid into the seat across from him.

“Okay,” Bucky said. “Explain all of this to me.”

Maybe it wasn’t a smart idea to startle a god. Thor didn’t look startled, anyway.

“Bucky Barnes,” he said, warmly, “have I mentioned recently how delicious the donuts are?”

“Yes, every day.”

“I didn’t think I had mentioned it today.”

“You did, right when you walked in,” Bucky said, blandly. “You lifted your arms and announced it for the whole store to hear.” 

“So I did,” Thor said, beaming. “What can I do for you?”

“You and the thief. How does it work?”

“In bed? He’s actually a lot more generous than he looks, he— ”

“Nope,” Bucky interrupted. “No, not at all what I’m asking.” 

“It’s not as scandalous as it seems.” 

“You arrested him.”

“Loki understands the importance of my work,” Thor said, taking a swig from his coffee. “I couldn’t afford to be fired in this economy.”

Bucky squinted at him. “Aren’t you… royalty?”

“On Asgard, yes. On Midgard, I earn my keep in gold doubloons like the rest of you.” 

“That’s not correct,” Bucky said, softly, with the energy of an exhausted Stu Pickles. “You’re on opposite sides. When you leave the house in the morning, you leave to do _completely opposite work_. And at the end of the day, you come home, and— what? Can you even tell each other what you do? Can you talk about your days normally, or is it just secrets and lies? How does he deal with the fact that you’re putting your own stupid ass on the line, night after night, and there’s nothing he can do about it because of— a conflict of interest?” 

He stopped himself, there, before he could go too far. (Because he hadn’t gone too far already, see, this type of conversation happened all the time with total strangers, and prying into their personal lives like a ravenous beast, in some half-assed attempt to figure out your own untenable issues, rather than having a conversation with the stubborn bastard you’d been in love with your entire life— who broke your heart just by virtue of _not being there anymore_ — was easier, and completely normal.) 

“I wasn’t aware there was a conflict of interest between the Avengers and the Central Intelligence Agency.” Thor leaned in, conspiratorially, a half-smile on his face. “And I don’t think you’ve asked the question you really want to ask.”

 _Fuck_ , Bucky thought, and knew that he had been caught. He silently cursed every form of media that had convinced him all these years that big, blond jocks were supposed to be stupid. 

“Do you want to try again?”

“No,” Bucky said. “At least tell me what happened when you brought him into the authorities.” 

“And then you’ll listen to my 1,500 year old advice about what to do about Steve Rogers?”

“You’ve been sitting on advice for 1,500 years?”

Thor raised an eyebrow. 

“Okay,” Bucky said, “okay, okay. Fine.” 

“We fell in love on the way back here. They wanted to charge him in Paris, but S.H.I.E.L.D. was convinced he could be useful to them somehow, and his crimes were spread out enough that no single country could stake a claim on him. He is an American citizen, however, and he’d had enough run-ins with more violent fugitives that we were able to convince the appropriate authorities that he could be an asset.” 

“‘We’?”

“Love makes you stupid,” Thor said with a shrug. “Everyone knows that.” 

“So he… became some kind of informant?”

“No,” Thor shook his head, “he is too unreliable to be an informant. Lying is his most prevalent quality.” 

“Are you fucking shitting me?”

“Why,” Thor asked, “would I be Fucking Shitting You?”

“Everything was fine two week ago,” Bucky said, not exactly replying. “And now my life is on the verge of complete collapse.”

“You’re very dramatic. I can see why Loki likes you so much.”

“I don’t,” came a voice from behind Bucky. Loki pulled a chair over, closer to Thor than really necessary, and slipped into it. “I don’t like anyone.”

“See,” Thor said, his attention still on Bucky, “what I mean about the lying?”

“I can’t witness any more of this. I have to go. The donuts are probably burning back there, somewhere.”

“Sit,” Thor said, with some weird God authority that, ridiculously enough, worked. Bucky didn’t budge from his seat. “Now you are going to listen to me.”

Bucky sighed. 

“As I’ve said,” Thor continued, “love makes you stupid. Sometimes, in completely hypothetical situations, it makes you feed classified information to fugitives so they’ll have leverage in the deals they make and won’t have to go to jail where you can no longer gaze upon their fairness. Sometimes, in other, evidently non-hypothetical situations, it makes you avoid the person you love out of some kind of unfounded fear that you aren’t good for one another anymore.”

“The _least_ you can do is give our situations the same classification of hypothetical.”

“No. I’m trying to tell you something.”

“You ought to be clearer,” Loki chimed in, looping his arm around Thor’s. It made Bucky want to gag. “What he’s trying to say is that criminality is subjective, and that if you want to be with someone, you should break the law for them.”

“No,” Thor said again. “But— close. What I’m trying to say is that I think the reason you’re so curious about Loki and I is because it seems impossible, and you’ve convinced yourself that a healthy relationship with the man you love _is_ impossible. But it isn't. Nothing is. And the comforting part of it all is that you don’t have to figure it out all on your own.”

“What?”

“Talk to him.”

“Why does everyone keep telling me to do that?” Bucky asked, like an idiot person who had never heard good advice before.

“Open communication is very important,” Loki said, sagely, like a smart person who wasn’t wanted in twenty-seven countries. He kissed Thor’s shoulder through his shirt, then rested his chin on it. 

“You guys are making me feel really crazy.” 

“Thank you,” Loki said. “And you’re welcome.”

Bucky stood up. He had to get away from them before something even worse happened. Thor and Loki both watched him, carefully, as he walked away, looking like a man who had done everything in the world and still somehow did not have anything figured out. After a moment, Loki pulled away from Thor, and took the First Folio out, turning to _As You Like It._   
  
  


IX

There were at least seventeen text messages, typed out, proofread, and never sent. Bucky made sure to fill in the text box before he found the appropriate contact, so there could never be an accident. He was meticulous in his mania. Had he been like this, before, (meticulous?), or had it been a side effect of the work, the Serum, the secrecy? Steve would have known, had he the courage to ask. Steve would have known other things, too, like when Bucky got the scar on the inside of his left elbow and whether they had discussed the future together and how their first time had been, if the windows had been open. When Bucky opened up the book that was hidden in the kitchen drawer and looked at the newspaper clippings and saw Steve’s face he hoped that answers would rise to the surface of his mind. But they just seemed to evaporate further. 

There were at least seventeen text messages, and every last one of them said more or less the same thing.

“Hi” and “How are you” and “It’s Bucky” and “I got your note— a little weird of you to come by my place when I haven’t given you the address but that’s fine, who am I to judge, all things considered.” Etc. Weeks passed, and then months. Wilson gave him the occasional disappointed look, but that was just Wilson; and even Loki had taken to ignoring him, his focus solely on the role of Rosalind. Shuri mixed batter and gazed at him mournfully, as though he had been given two weeks left to live. Captain Justice for Breakfast hadn’t visited again, which was typical, both in the way that he often blew through places with no semblance of respect for the havoc he left in his wake and also in the way that he was too stubborn to back down from a situation even if it was hurting him too. Well, Bucky could be stubborn. Bucky could eat Stubborn for Breakfast.

Someone who had been keeping track of the Avengers’ activities— which, of course, Bucky had not been doing— would have also known that they’d been dispatched to Canada to dismantle a project only vaguely described to the public as “Project X.” Someone who had developed razor-sharp hacking skills as a result of government paranoia— which, you know— could delve into the personal files of one Professor A. Thorton, the psychotic genius behind the experiments, and find an experiment not unlike the US government’s super-soldier program, with perhaps less ethical standards and a tad bit more torture. There were other files, one marked “Logan,” another marked “Victor.” A “Laura” and a “Wade.” Other people out there, maybe like Steve, most likely more like him, and even possibly more fucked up than either of them. Experiments. Volunteers? No. 

Bucky had worked hard to put these kinds of things behind him, and to build a quiet life. He decided he had no business meddling now, when getting out had been his only goal for so long, and when the primary cause of his meddling was currently thousands of miles away— had been thousands of miles away even while living in the same city. 

He shut his laptop down and pushed it away. He considered watching TV or taking a nap or sharpening the five knives he had strapped to the underside of his bed, just in case of emergencies, but he did not do any of those things. Bucky sat on his couch instead, and stared listlessly at his phone, scrolling through the same three apps until hours had gone by. Until his phone rang.

Bucky didn’t normally answer unknown numbers, but, well. He picked up and before he could say anything at all, a booming voice from the other end had him pulling the phone away from his ear. He didn’t even need to put it on speaker.

“It’s Thor,” the voice was saying, “from the donut shop. Your donut shop. I am at the donut shop, and you are not.” 

“Yeah, hi, it’s— ”

“I thought you lived at the donut shop,” Thor continued, ignoring him. “I certainly would, if I had such a fine shop to call my own. Listen, Bucky Barnes! I have a favor to ask of you.”

“What,” Bucky asked, rubbing at his temple, “is it?”

“Loki has rented out the Brooklyn Academy of Music for his theater production. We were hoping you would bring some of your best Nutella donuts for the occasion.” 

“Just Nutella? A theater production? Wait, he rented out _BAM_?”

“An assortment, then, but heavy on the Nutella.”

“How did he rent out _BAM_?”

There was a silence. “The performance is next Friday.”

“So you’re not gonna explain, huh?”

“It starts at 8.”

“Fucking hell— how many donuts do you think you’ll need?”

“Uh, well.” 

“How many people do you expect to come?”

“It is a very large theater, and he has invited the city of New York.” 

“Are you fucking kidding, Thor?”

“Again, I don’t know why I would do that. Asgardians have no sense of humor.” 

“How would I know that?”

“Everyone knows that,” Thor said. “Just like how everyone knows Midgardians can’t swim.” 

“What.”

“Let’s have all the donuts, just to be safe.” 

“I can’t fucking believe,” Bucky began, “this is my life. Fine, okay. Is he gonna have a meltdown if no one comes?”

“Why,” Thor said, his voice suddenly very serious, “would no one come.”

“I mean, it’s always a possibility that— ”

“They will come. Please try to get there an hour early.”

“Okay,” Bucky said, as the will to exist slowly seeped out of his hands. “I’ll be there. Okay.” He hung up before Thor could say anything even more distressing, and pulled his laptop back out. The Harvey Theater, it turned out, seated close to 1,000 people and could be rented for the incredibly affordable sum of $60,000. There was really no time to make any kind of mental comment about that— it was Wednesday, which gave him less than a week to figure out how to make 1,000 donuts. 

He needed backup. Bucky stared at his phone for a good, long minute, before picking it back up.  
  
  


X

It was an all hands on deck situation. Somehow, most likely at Steve and Thor’s joint insistence, half of the Avengers also found themselves in the kitchen, measuring, stirring, and kneading. The final touches were under Shuri’s sole supervision, as she was the most detail-oriented of them all, and because she could be _mean_. Natasha Romanoff took a liking to her immediately, which Bucky considered with a mix of terror and pride. Shuri was the greatest of all time, and Bucky had decided early on in his career as a baker that he would not rest until everyone knew this.

The work was a blessing in disguise: making 1,000 donuts from scratch left no room for deeply private conversations about feelings. Even if Wilson was painfully obvious about shooting them death glares, Steve “Literally Less Subtle Than A Talking Volcano” Rogers somehow kept his head down and did the donut work of 4 men and only asked crucial questions like “do we have enough sugar for the next batch?”— which, of course, they did not fucking have, because that’s just how life was— and between pulling Peter Parker away from War Machine and shoving him out the door, Bucky and Captain Star-Spangled only had the chance to exchange one frantic, desperate look before going back to their individual duties. 

“Stop it _Wilson_ ,” Bucky hissed at his sworn enemy as he walked by, carrying a tray of just flour.

“Talk to him _Barnes_ ,” Wilson hissed back, somehow managing to balance the tray on one hand and throw a fistful of flour in Bucky’s face with the other. “And you’ve got flour on your face, by the way.” 

Somehow this, and not the 70-something-year stint as an assassin, would be the thing to do him in. 

They worked for days, and when Friday finally came all they needed was to fry, glaze, and decorate. One thousand donuts. It would be done, or they would die trying. All of them. Bucky would make sure it would be all of them, and not just his crew, who perished under 50 tons of confectioners’ sugar. They had a truck for deliveries of course, but no order had ever really exceeded private events for thirty or so people. This was a request of such absurd proportions that Bucky simply could not have done anything besides accept it, and by the time noon struck on Friday, even he had to admit the Avengers had their uses. They filed out, slowly, most of the work having been done, with the promise that they’d be back around 6 to load up their various cars and flying vehicles and take everything down to Fulton. Bucky did not miss the fact that Natasha and Shuri had exchanged numbers, or the Wilson/Rhodes Fistbump of Goodbye, or the fact that Peter Parker was wearing a Thor shirt to work. 

_Thor_ , Bucky thought, bitterly, who had done this to him. But before he could fixate on how much he suddenly hated alien gods, an even worse person approached him. 

“Hey,” Steve said, wandering into the kitchen as Bucky packed up the last of the boxes. 

“Hi.” 

“You’ve got flour on your face,” he said, for the second time, two times too many, and tilted Bucky’s face toward him, and brushed it away with his terrible hands. 

“I,” Bucky said, turning back to his donut boxes, “have to finish these before I go change.”

“Are there more? I can help.”

“No there aren’t _more_ ,” Bucky said, as though it were obvious, and also not directly contradicting what he had said as an excuse not to look at Steve two seconds ago, and also as if it were Steve’s fault somehow that there weren’t more boxes to tape up, and further as if it were a bad thing that the work was all finished. 

“Oh,” Steve said, and anyone else’s tone would be of that toward a completely crazy person, but Steve kept his neutral. 

“I got your letter.”

“I figured as much. But… I had kinda hoped you’d reply.”

“And say what, Steve? That I can’t remember half of the good things, and the other half only come with the bad? That we’ve both changed too much to still be the people we thought we were? That I miss your warmth in the morning, but— it’s fine— I bought a weighted blanket and I think it’s almost as good?”

“You replaced me with a weighted blanket?” Steve asked, and the slight tinge of hurt in his voice wasn’t nearly as prevalent as the curiosity. 

Bucky scowled. He sealed an already-sealed corner with another piece of tape. 

“Can you look at me for just one second?” Steve asked.

“No,” Bucky said, but he did anyway. “No— what do you want? And why now? I think that’s the question you should answer first. Why _now_?”

Steve sighed, running a hand through his hair. It still flopped, unruly, on his forehead— a sign he needed a cut. Bucky had liked it long, though, even when they were kids. It was soft when it was long, like his mouth and his neck. Bucky shook the feeling off, turned his attention back to the present. To this Steve. To not his Steve.

“Everything was so different, before. I was in and out of cryo, saved for only big events, emergencies— things your side couldn’t handle.” At this, at least, he had the decency to duck his head down and avoid eye contact; this complete and total demolition of Bucky’s prior livelihood. “I wasn’t really… relationship material. And you had this look about you, Bucky, the first time I saw you again I almost couldn’t believe it was you. It was distant, and it was focused. But when the Avengers brought me on— ”

“Two years ago,” Bucky interrupted.

“Yeah. Two years ago. I thought… ” He sighed again. The man who stopped helicopters with his bare hands and could jump out of a plane without a parachute. At a loss for words in front of one Bucky Barnes.

“I wanted to give us time, Buck,” Steve continued. “I wanted to give myself time, because I didn’t know if I’d be any good in this world— this century I didn’t fully understand— and I wanted to give you time to decide to do what you wanted for a change.” 

Bucky frowned at that. “How could you have possibly known I wasn’t living out my life’s dream at that time?”

“Because I know you. I know you. I always have.” 

“I joined the Army,” Bucky said. “I did it willingly.”

“We did it because we had no other choice.” 

Bucky didn’t say anything.

“You seemed, now, after all that time, you seemed happy.”

“And so what? You just had to come through and fuck it all up?” He regretted it the moment he said it. The exhausted look Steve carried around with him gave way to hurt, and it settled so severely in Bucky’s stomach that he felt his knees weaken underneath him. “I’m sorry,” Bucky said. 

“Do you want me to leave?”

“I don’t really know anymore, Stevie,” Bucky said, quietly. The kitchen was so small, and so overheated. Suddenly Bucky couldn’t think of anywhere he’d like to be less, than this stupid kitchen he had wanted for his whole life. Outside, the weather was rumbling. 

“I need to go home,” he said. “I need to shower and find something to wear to fucking BAM. I need to figure out how I’m going to get everything in this kitchen clean in time to open tomorrow morning, and resume business as usual, as if I didn’t spend the past nine days frantically baking for the man who stole three Fabergé eggs. I need— I need you to stop standing so close because it’s making me dizzy, and my resolve isn’t what it used to be, and I’ve loved you my whole _stupid_ , fucking, idiotic life but that doesn’t change the fact that everything is different now, and I think the thing I’m afraid of most, the thing I really couldn’t handle— moreso than the war and the almost dying and the killing figureheads and the years apart— is you getting to know me now, getting to know me again, and not loving what you found.” 

Steve watched him quietly as he spoke, and the look on his face was soft, and it was fond, and it was sad.

“Bucky,” he said. 

Lightning crashed outside, a low buzzing filled the room, and the lights flickered off.

“ _Fuck_!” Bucky said. “Fucking— _fuck_ , _Fuck_.” A pause. “Fuck!”

“Hey,” Steve said, taking his hand, and slowly pulling him out of the kitchen. “It’s okay. Let’s just leave. Go home, take your shower. It’s going to be fine.” 

“No,” Bucky mumbled, protesting just to protest, to show that He, Too could protest stuff, but followed along anyway. The dining room, completely empty of people, looked bleak; the floor-to-ceiling windows almost entirely impossible to see out of for the rain. It fell in dark grey sheets all around them, and it made Bucky shiver. 

“What are the chances you’ve got an umbrella lying around somewhere?” Steve asked.

“None.”

“That’s what I expected,” Steve laughed. 

“Let’s just make a run for it,” Bucky said. “The subway’s only two blocks away.” 

“Okay,” Steve said, and gave him a lopsided smile. “I’m faster than you, anyway.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know it’s true.”

“It’s not fucking true.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Oh, now you’re a gambling man?” Bucky asked, crossing his arms.

Steve grinned. It was genuine, shit-eating. Bucky had missed that goddamn grin. “It’s not really much of a gamble.”

“Fuck you.”

“Sure,” Steve said, slowly, “if you can catch up.” 

That was enough, frankly, for Bucky. He didn’t say another word. He simply walked out the door, and started to run.   
  
  


XI

Steve caught up to him, and then passed him, because of course he did. Captain Run Forty-Nine Miles In A Minute. Captain Eat My Dust! Captain Actually Waiting For Bucky, In The Pouring Rain, While Bucky Trailed Only A Few Paces Behind.

“Are you insane?” he asked, coming to a stop. “Why didn’t you go down?”

“Couldn’t leave you behind,” Steve said, and he smiled, and there were raindrops caught on his eyelashes, his button-down clinging to his shoulders and chest. He was like a painting or a sculpture and maybe for the first time since Bucky had been introduced to Loki he understood why the man stole art for a living. 

“This is stupid,” Bucky said, taking one step closer. Neither of them started the descent. They just stood there, two idiots, looking at one another while the skies opened up around them. 

“I know,” Steve said. He took a step toward Bucky. “We’ve always been stupid.” 

“Speak for yourself.”

Steve smiled. Gently, he put his hand on Bucky’s waist, and he tugged him forward. “Buck,” he said.

“What.”

“No matter how many lifetimes pass between us— no matter what you’ve done, or haven’t done, or will someday do— there isn’t a version of you I won’t find, and love.”

“Stupid idiot,” Bucky sniffed, looking up at him. “You’re gonna catch hypothermia out here like this.”

“Not really a chance of that anymore, Buck.”

“I guess some things changed for the better,” Bucky said, and kissed him. If Steve was surprised, he did not show it, but kissed Bucky back, slowly and softly and _finally_. Bucky held him close by the lapels of his shirt and pulled him closer, and his fingers were frozen but they caught on anyway, frostbite be damned. It had been years. Now, they deserved years of this. Someone walking by— someone walking by _fast_ , with an _umbrella_ — stopped and whooped and went on their way. 

Steve pulled back, and took Bucky’s hands in his. “Okay,” he said. “I don’t actually know if we can’t catch hypothermia, I mean— the risk isn’t as great as it used to be, but it’s really goddamn cold.”

Bucky stared at him for one, silent moment before bursting into laughter at that, and pulling Steve down the stairs, finally, toward the subway home. He kissed him against the map, dangerously close to the platform edge, and he kissed him again in the corner of their car. He kissed him until they came to his stop, and he did not let him go, and he kissed him as they walked out the doors together.

“This isn’t my stop,” Steve said, when he realized where they were. The rain had dimmed, though it seemed like the type of day that could open back up at any given moment.

“No,” Bucky said.

“This is your stop.”

“Yes,” Bucky said.

“Are you inviting me to see your place? I thought you had to shower. I thought it was _very urgent_.”

“Mm,” Bucky said. “New urgencies have come up. New urgencies, that haven taken the place of old urgencies.”

“Yeah? What urgencies are those?”

Bucky led the way to his apartment, even though it was no secret anymore. He had the brief, inconsequential thought— that no one had ever been over before. He had gone out, himself, but they had never come back to his place. Not even T’Challa, who he had tried to imagine loving. It was fitting that Steve would be the first, and, if Bucky had anything to say about it, the only. He opened up the door; he ushered Steve in. He looked at him, completely soaked through, 6 feet and 2 inches of muscle and strength and truth, loving him now the way he loved him at 5 feet and 4 inches of scrawn and anger and truth. The years between them collapsing on themselves, meaning nothing at all. 

Bucky smiled. “You said if I could catch up.”  
  
  


XII (Epilogue)

They made it to BAM, on time, and only slightly disheveled. The donuts arrived. The guests— of which there were far more than the handful Bucky actually expected, but thank god, in a way, because otherwise they would have made _1,000 donuts for nothing_ — arrived. Thor greeted them and he was practically glowing with excitement and pride and it was all a little too much for Bucky to handle, so he took full advantage of the open bar. _How_ they had managed to get an open bar on top of everything else was beyond him, and also beyond the limits of his care.

Sam Wilson was there, too, and he gave Bucky a Knowing Look, and Bucky resisted the urge to throw a drink in his face, because he was an adult, and he could be mature, and he could admit to the fact that Sam Wilson was one of his dearest friends.

Everyone took their seats eventually, about 10 minutes to curtain. They sat in the front row— Bucky Barnes and his Captain America— and as the lights dimmed, Steve reached for his hand, and Bucky let him hold it.

**Author's Note:**

> * From “The Defeated” by Linda Gregg:
> 
> Already what I remember  
> most is the happiness of seeing you. Having tea.  
> Falling asleep. Waking up with you there awake  
> in the kitchen. It was like being alive twice.  
> I’ll try to tell you better when I am stronger.
> 
> “It was like being alive twice” is also the dedication of her first collection of poems, “Too Bright to See,” dedicated to long-time partner Jack Gilbert. It seems they had broken up by the time she had written the poem, which references her husband John in prior lines (“John was nice this morning.”). Still. She wrote of her relationship with Jack— “it was like being alive twice.” Like being alive twice.


End file.
